Sound Logic
by Saucery
Summary: "Watson," I murmured into his ear, "this is most irregular."


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><p><strong>SOUND LOGIC<strong>

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><p>"Watson," I murmured into his ear, "this is most irregular."<p>

"Irregularity is your _modus operandi_, is it not?" Watson, the devil, had his thumbs under the edges of my waistcoat; their pressure bore me softly backwards, until the balcony's ledge brushed my back.

"You insult me." I watched the balcony door over his shoulder, for my good sense had not entirely deserted me; not yet, at any rate. "I am a most regular man."

"You are regular neither in your habits," he bent forward, "nor in your appetites," his mouth opened against my throat, "nor in your _pulse_." He bit.

Indeed, my good sense had _not_ deserted me, for I took the precautionary measure of stifling my gasp; I did so against his collar, which was stiff and starched and tasted of spice. He'd been using the cologne on my dresser, again; indubitably, this meant that he'd checked on my syringe as well. He'd know that I'd know, and that I'd be reminded of our agreement. Oh, Watson. Forever vigilant.

"Spying on me again, were you?"

"Only verifying that you were, in fact, holding up your end of our agreement." His voice was rough; not as rough as his mustache was against my skin, but that would soon change.

"Our agreement." No drugs, as long as Watson continued to furnish me with this most potent distraction. "You ought to trust me, my man."

"It is because I am _your man_," his thumbs rucked up my shirt, "that I cannot trust you."

"To be faithful to you?"

"To protect yourself."

And with reason. No less than three months ago, we'd had another one of our spectacular rows - the kind that resulted in Mrs. Hudson wringing her hands and attempting, with varying degrees of success, to coax us out of our respective rooms. After several days of what could only be called a pitched battle - with both camps refusing to surrender, or seek parlay, or make peace - only after several days of this foolishness did we finally come to an equitable solution.

Our unwilling negotiations had been arranged by Mrs. Hudson, who had somewhat ingeniously managed to manipulate us into occupying the living room at the same time. Watson was firmly stationed by the mantelpiece, wearing the fixed glower of a gargoyle - and I was in my armchair, as always, smoking my pipe. Perhaps Watson had hoped to intimidate me with his uncharacteristic glare, but in truth, it only charmed me; I knew very well that his ferocity was on my account, and, he believed, for my own good.

My own appearance must have disarmed him a little, if his repeated glances at my left calf - bared by a too-loosely tied gown - were any indication. I tilted it upwards, from its innocent perch on my right knee, and Watson's eyes immediately flew to mine. His flush revealed his knowledge that he'd been spotted, and very thoroughly caught.

He cleared his throat. Looked away from me. "It is improper," he said, "to be so inattentively dressed in the presence of a woman."

I cocked my head. "Are you a woman, Watson?"

He scowled - still, bless his stubborn soul, without looking at me. "It is for the sake of _Mrs. Hudson_," he hissed, "that I warn you. And it is you who are womanlike, Holmes."

"Oh?" I puffed from my pipe. "You have had rather concrete proof of my manhood; you have even, if I may say so, attested to it with your bare hands. If you persist in calling me womanly, Watson, you must have good reason indeed."

Watson's glare - directed, for the moment, at the fireplace - ratcheted up a notch. It astounded me that the kindling didn't catch fire, there and then.

"Do reveal," I drawled, "the logic behind your deduction."

Watson whipped around; his eyes were flinty, and for a moment, I thought that I had overplayed my hand. No other human being had ever placed me in quite such an untenable situation - where war was, at times, as pleasurable as peace, and yet was as impossible to endure as it was to end.

"Very well," Watson growled. He took one step towards me, and then another, and then another - until he was standing above me, in a sudden rush of Watson-scent, as if he were a djinn.

_Grant my wishes, John._ I smiled up at him.

It proved to be a tactical error. He might have perceived my smile as a sneer, given the situation; his darkening brow certainly indicated it. "There," he said, with with a low rumble that sent a shiver up my spine. "_That_ is what makes you so womanly."

I took a deep breath - partly to breathe in more of his scent, partly to bite back a reply of my own, and partly to gain the advantage of a pair of parted lips - a particular weakness of Watson's, for, indeed, Watson's gaze _did_ flicker down to them.

"Again," he said. "You manipulate me. You withhold your plans from me, and only reveal that which is likely to ensure my cooperation. You use my desire against me - "

"My dear Watson, I would rather say that you use your, ah, 'desire' against _me_, and often _upon_ me, with marvelous, mutually enjoyable results - "

"_Holmes_."

I silenced myself with my pipe. A momentary withdrawal was, at times, strategically beneficial.

"I put up with all of that. I never complain - "

I pulled out my pipe and pointed it at him. "What, precisely, do you imagine you are doing now?"

" - but this, Holmes, is the very _limit_. Your abuse of drugs, poisons and intoxicating substances - "

"It's the _use_, not the abuse - "

"_You are destroying yourself._"

"I - " Suddenly, I was thrown into shadow, as Watson practically leapt upon me and forced his hand upon my mouth. I stared up at him, quite - well, 'surprised' was not the word, as I had foreseen this very sequence of events as soon as Watson had entered the room - but overcome, nonetheless. _Quite_ overcome. Nothing, you see, can ever equal the sight of my dear doctor in a towering rage. And if I was overcome in ways more carnal than fearful, then who could say I was wrong?

"_No_. Not another _word_."

I breathed against his palm - warm and familiar and heavy as it was, rough with pistol-calluses and scented with tobacco and ink and old soap, and traces of his own pleasure, of course, as he had no doubt been taking it from himself, these past few days, without me. And he called _me_ selfish.

"What must I do? What - I _know_ you, Holmes, and that you would trade not one of your pleasures unless it was for a greater one - the greatest, of course, being _mystery_ - but what can I offer you? What can I do to make you stop - stop - " He was _trembling_, oh, Watson, the poor man.

I laid my hand upon his. Gently. And pulled his away, but not before kissing it - not before making him catch his breath. "You," I said.

"Pardon?" His eyes were dark; he was looking at my mouth. He was, really, so _very_ easy to distract. And rather adorable, in how swiftly he was reduced to baffled, polite questions after such a display of righteous wrath.

"Offer me yourself. Without qualifications."

Watson stared at me. "I - haven't I _already_…?"

"No, Watson, you have not. There shall be no slender governesses. No petite laundresses. No talk of getting _married_," I only just refrained from spitting out the word, the thrice-damned _word_, "and raising _children_, for god's sake, Watson, as though you could tolerate a life other than one that requires constant risks and frequent near-death experiences."

He was still staring at me.

And it was _my_ turn to glare. "Offer me this, and you shall have what you want. My life, my health, whatever it is, whatever act of unreasonable discipline - and not of the pleasurable kind - that you expect - "

"You planned this," said Watson, slowly, looking down at me as if I were an elf, or a Puck of some particularly alarming variety, sent to bedevil a donkey's head onto his neck. "You _planned_ this, didn't you? The drugs, the row, the _waiting_ - "

No point in denying it. Watson continued to grow ever more effective in the science of deduction, and I was hardly going to discourage him.

I firmed my jaw. And met his eyes. "Yes."

"You - " He stepped away from me, daring to look _betrayed_, when it was I who had always been - "You were _jealous_. You _are_jealous - "

"I am merely preemptive."

"Pre - " He shook his head. "You never said."

"I believe I made it clear. Repeatedly."

"You made it sound like a _jest_."

"Perhaps it was you," I said, "that made a jest _of_ it."

He staggered back to the mantelpiece, and leaned against it. His limp was, once again, apparent. "I…" He blinked, in the manner of one waking up from a fitful sleep, half-disbelieving and half-wondrous. "I… do not know whether to wring your neck or to press penitent kisses to your feet."

"Quite as per normal, then." I sat back and began smoking my pipe, again. "My victory?"

"Your victory," he conceded, almost _dully_, but I knew Watson. He was, after all, my Knight to E4. He could take any defeat and turn it into a conquest of his own. "And in what manner would you like this… unqualified offer to be made?"

"Often," I said. "Regularly. At every available opportunity." What I was proposing, ultimately, was to make _Watson_ my drug of choice, so that I might not need to partake of any other stimulants. Watson could, I knew, be _very_ stimulating, indeed - but for that, he needed to be continually available to me, and not - _ever_ - to anyone else.

"Well," he murmured, and, yes, _finally_, a certain light began to make itself known in his eyes - a light that would, were Mrs. Hudson not still present in the house, promise a thorough 'shagging', if the phraseology of our last client, a Convent Garden prostitute, was to be trusted. "I am sure that can be arranged."

And so it was.

And so we found ourselves, here, on the balcony of a castle belonging to a wrongly disinherited duke that had only recently been reinstated, while a gunman no doubt wove his way through the crowd inside. Watson didn't know about the gunman, of course; it would behoove him not to know of any of it for a little while longer. Say, eighteen minutes and forty seconds, long enough for the both of us to climax and for the gunman to realize that the disinherited duke was not, in fact, present, either in disguise or out, and deciding at that point to turn his peripatetic rage on the other guests.

Or rather, he'd _try_ to turn it on the other guests; he would not succeed, as Watson and I would have returned to the hall - I, beneath a very convenient chandelier poised just above the doorway, and Watson, to my immediate left, his quick eyes already spotting the pistol hidden in the sleeve of a blue-coated man precisely three feet and twenty-four centimeters away from us - for that was where the gunman would be, after exiting and reentering the hall from the fourth glass door, the one decorated - ridiculously - with cloth doves.

"Where did you go?" Watson asked, softly, even though his hand was firm as it slipped down to my trouser-clad thighs and stroked over them, and _between_ them, drawing another - sensibly stifled - gasp from me. "You were far away, again."

"Clearly," I said, "you ought to be trying harder."

"If I try any _harder_," he harrumphed, "I might break something."

"The balcony?" My voice was teasing.

"You." His, however, was _not_.

Thus threatened, I duly submitted to his care, and arched my throat for his teeth and spread my legs for his hands, and let him do with me what he willed - what we _both_ willed - until such time as his perfect, harsh, callused grip had brought us both to our peaks, and Watson's once-pristine kerchief was terribly and irrevocably stained.

Oh, dear. And it was the one that pesky little governess had monogrammed, too. Many, many years ago.

Watson looked down at it, snorted, and tossed it over the ledge. It drifted down - very _much_ a cloth dove - to settle whitely upon the night grass.

"Incriminating evidence, good doctor."

"And who would incriminate us?"

"Certainly not the duke, who is, I assure you, presently lying low at 221B Baker Street."

Watson cursed - in astonishing detail - and hobbled away from me, doing up his trousers. His face was a rictus of appalled, terrified shock. "You - you mean to say that our client has been _living with us_? Hiding in our _home_? All this time?"

"Hardly 'all this time', my dear. Only since the assassination threats made themselves known."

"Only - that's _three whole days_! In which time we have committed any _number_ of criminal acts - punishable by _death_ - in the presence of a _duke_! Oh - oh, god, don't tell me he was in the _attic_, just above us, hearing every cry, every - "

"Nonsense," I scoffed. "He was in my room."

Watson _groaned_.

"Well, I haven't been _in_ my room in a great many days, as we have been so _very_ busy in yours - "

"Your. Room. Is just. Down. The hall. From. Mine."

"You really are punctuating your sentences most curiously, Watson."

"Answer me!"

"Oh? Was that a question?"

Watson gnashed his _teeth_ - and looked, in the light of the moon, to be a very particular species of tiger. The kind that would, at the slightest provocation, tear out one's throat.

I thought he was beautiful. "No need to be alarmed, Watson. The duke is an open-minded man - "

"He knows that we're inverts!"

"Why, of course, we're not. We're standing quite upright, aren't we? Not dangling from the ceiling like bats? Nothing inverted about us, at all."

Watson pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, and emitted a strange, strangled noise - something between a laugh and a moan of exquisite, unbearable pain. "Holmes. You are either a lunatic of the first class or a lunatic _beyond class_ - "

"Indeed, I am unclassifiable. Let's return to the hall, shall we? We have only four minutes until Martin Langdon, the duke's erstwhile lover and now assassin, takes out his pistol and starts shooting the guests."

Watson's hands jerked away from his face. "_What?_"

"I told you he was open-minded."

Watson's mouth worked, helplessly, but then his eyes _narrowed_, and his _glare_ narrowed, and he gritted out: "You withheld your plans from me. Again."

"You withheld your touch from me, didn't you?"

"My - I dragged you out onto a balcony to ravish you!"

"You did absolutely nothing in the hall. For a full two _hours_."

"We were surrounded by three hundred guests!"

"Two hundred and ninety-six."

"That! That many people! And servants! And - "

"There were curtains," I pointed out, somewhat peevishly. "There were drapes."

Watson sagged, for a moment, before manfully drawing himself up and reaching for his _own_ pistol. To shoot the villain, ostensibly, and not I. "Very well. The next time we're invited to someone's home, I shall make it a point to debauch you in public, in private, under dining-tables, behind drapes, on balconies, in basements, on rooftops, against windows, on parapets, in gardens, against gargoyles, in closets, on drawbridges, in alcoves, on chairs, in chimneys and on carpets. Are we clear?"

"And beds," I added, innocently. "You forgot the beds."

Watson's eyes _blazed_. "And beds," he said - ground out, rather - and pushed me back against the balcony for one last, biting kiss. "Now, let's go and stop the bastard."

We went and stopped the bastard. And not a second too late.

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><p><strong>fin.<strong>


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